Recycling

I’m looking for a guy. Maybe you can help. It’s the guy who throws the local shopper newspaper onto my porch, up the sidewalk, into Pat’s flower beds, or just leaves it flopped in the front yard. Winter, summer, rain, snow, sleet, hail and in the dark of night this guy pitches newspapers I don’t want and have to pick up whether they’re dry and neatly bound with a rubber band or, more usually, in a soppy, sodden soaky mess. I want this guy. I want to know where he lives because I’ve been saving the papers – nearly a dozen trash bags now – and I want to give them back. I figure he’s been doing this for so long and with such enthusiasm it must give him real joy. I want to feel his joy. I want to giggle as I whip wet crusty newspapers toward the front of his house, onto his walkway and at his wife’s flower beds.

Actually this is just a bargaining chip. The guy I really want is the one who leaves the forty pounds of phone books on my porch every year. I don’t need them, don’t want but maybe one every couple of years. I figure the shopper guy has crossed paths with him at least a few times, had a conversation or two, can give me the make and model of his vehicle or even knows where he lives. If I can find that guy then he’ll get the newspapers and the phone books. I’ve been saving them, too. And I’ll probably be giggling with joy at each one I whip into his yard..

Having That Run Down Feeling

My minivan leaks transmission fluid. Not a lot, there are no puddles, it’s more of an intermittent drip. It’s enough to let me see where I’ve parked but not enough for someone to follow a trail. I think it’s some sort of design flaw. Other minivans I’ve had have done the same thing. I’ve just gotten used to bringing along a couple of quarts of transmission fluid to periodically top off the tranny.

There are times, though, when I forget to check for a while and the van follows this pattern: It backs out of the drive just fine but when I put it in to Drive, it just sits there. Sometimes it takes a little while to hit the gear and start moving forward. Other times it doesn’t. It stays at an angle blocking the alley and waits for me to feed it. It did that last week and I jumped out, dug around in the back for the tranny fluid, popped the hood, pulled the dip stick and started to pour.

I think when the van first nudged me is when I realized the gear shift wasn’t in Park. A further nudge confirmed I’d put in enough ATF to get the vehicle moving, though standing in front of it while I had this realization was more than a little problematic.. I don’t recall ever having a vehicle chase me down an alley (or anywhere else for that matter), having it be a vehicle I owned made it a little more unnerving. I had never been mean to it, I oiled and fueled it regularly, cleaned it out and washed it once in a while, and yet here it was trying to run me over.

I don’t run as well as I used to but having a ton and a half vehicle bearing down on me gave a little extra motivation to move. I managed to get far enough ahead to side step it, jump into the driver’s seat smash on the brake. I put the gear shift to Park and put on the emergency brake before I got back out.

The hood was still open and the dip stick was where I left it by the radiator. The engine was making a noise like I should pour some more ATF down the spout but I figured it had enough for now. I rammed the dip stick hard down its tube several times muttering, “You thought you could run me over, huh, take that!” Jab. Jab. Jab

The minivan ran more smoothly than normal for the rest of the day. I think it was trying to apologize. I haven’t decided whether to accept or not. The experience is still a little nervy. I think I’m just going to watch for a while to make sure this was a lapse and not part of a new pattern. If it continues to be good I’ll give it some high octane for a treat but I think I’ll be pouring the ATF from the side.

Don't Try This At Home

I don’t know how you feel about leaky faucets but I don’t like them. I don’t like the drips. They do a mini-rumble out of the faucet nozzle, free fall toward the drain and land with an annoying, room echoing ping. Thought stops, breathing is interrupted, anticipation builds. Life becomes centered on the next falling drop of water.

We had a kitchen faucet that finally decided to give up. We are ‘Kitchen People.’ We spend a lot of time there and the drip cycle was interrupting cooking and meals, making visiting and conversation nearly unbearable. Every pause was filled with the steady sound of a drip, The faucet came with the house and was probably only a few years younger than me. It was one of those with one handle and no washers; I needed to replace the whole thing. I bought a new faucet and waited for a day when everyone was gone. I noticed there was no shut off for the cold water when I was looking at the faucet so I had one of those, too. I figured the whole replacement thing would take about an hour.

It probably would have gone better if I’d realized the main shut-off for the house didn’t work. By the time I found that out I had the cold water connector unscrewed and water was shooting everywhere. I quickly grabbed the new shut-off and tried to force it on the pipe. No go. Too much water. To lessen the pressure I ran around the house and turned on every faucet there was. Still too much. The only thing left was to run upstairs and flush the toilet. That did it. I got the shut on and turned it to close just as the toilet tank filled. I laid in the water under the sink and finished up with the hot water side and mounted the faucet. It worked. And it only took a lot longer than an hour. Sopping up gallons of water off the kitchen floor and from under the sink stretched the job out a whole lot more.

I got dried off and changed just before Pat got home. She noticed the new faucet. She noticed the sparkly clean kitchen floor more. I told her I had extra time that day so I thought I’d do a little around the house. Pat thinks I’m handy, as in Handy Man. It’s an illusion. Some day she’ll probably figure out I’m a guy with a basic knowledge of how a screw driver works. Until then she’s got a new faucet and, for a while, a really clean floor.

I Don't Stop At IHOP

I think everyone has a food they don’t like, can’t eat, don’t want to be near. It’s the smell, the taste, the texture, the aroma wafting through the air that dulls the appetite, turns stomachs and make us want to be somewhere else. It’s a real back-ended diet technique I’ve tried to avoid. You know what your food is. Mine is pancakes. And I blame my mother.

Feeding seven kids can put a strain on any food budget and my mother was always trying to find ways to stretch our food dollars. She found one solution on a table at the supermarket. The table held packets, hundreds of them, of pancake mix. Add some water, the directions claimed, and each packet could produce enough to feed a village. The packets cost ten cents each. The brand name, as I recall, was Generic. My mother bought five dollars worth and that started our pancake era.

We had pancakes for breakfast, pancakes for lunch, pancakes for dinner. On week days she’d give us the left-over breakfast pancakes to snack on while we waited for the school bus. At school, we’d open our lunch bags to find a peanut butter and jelly on pancake sandwiches. Yum.

It took months to work our way through the packets but we finally made it. It took years before I could look at a pancake dead on. Years more before I could actually eat one and then it was just to be polite. I still only eat them to be polite but it takes less effort. Either my palate is settling or I’m getting better at the polite thing. I think it’s the palate.

What We Don't Heat

I think every family has some short-hand phrase that passes down a few generations and makes absolutely no sense to an outsider. Often the phrase makes little sense to the younger family generation but they all know what it means. Our family phrase has to do with Kroftas. I have six siblings scattered across the country. All have children. Some have grandchildren. Each generation is familiar with the words,

“Shut the door. I’m not heating Kroftas.”

The phrase is said in an overly loud voice during winter and is directed at whatever child has just come in and left a door open. Kroftas is a good word to say in an overly loud voice. It starts at the back of the throat and has a good positioning of hard and soft consonants and vowels that it explodes forward toward the hapless child. Doors are quickly shut at the word ‘Kroftas.’

When they were younger my kids asked, “What’s a Kroftas?” and I’ve explained it this way:

“Kroftas are a gnome-like people that are harmless when they’re kept cold but if you let them warm up they become a mean. They’ll try to steal your shoes so they can nibble at your toes – Kroftas like toes – and they try to lick between your toes with long snaky tongues. After they’ve had their fill they become rude and poke at you and become really bad.” I usually shudder at this point and finish by saying, “It’s not good to heat a Kroftas.” Doors usually shut faster after this story. At least for a while.

Actually, the Kroftas were a family that lived about a quarter mile from our farm house and they were nice enough people. My Dad started using the phrase to emphasize how much heat we were letting out from our wood burning stove when he was the one who had to haul the wood and stoke the fire. The phrase just caught on. My brothers and I used it on each other when it was our turn to haul and stoke and we’ve passed the phrase down. So did my sisters, though they never hauled wood or stoked.

I have a grandchild on the way and he or she will likely hear the phrase more than once. When the time comes to explain about Kroftas I’m not going to talk about farm houses and wood burning stoves. I’m going to tell about the gnomes. Just to have the doors shut a little faster in winter. At least for a while.

Not So Secret, Victoria

I don’t know how I got on this mailing list but Victoria’s Secret keeps sending me brochures introducing new products, telling me about sales and offering free stuff. The one that came today had a card I could turn in at one of their stores for free panties I think are missing material in some of the crucial spots. That won’t fly here. Pat doesn’t allow holes in clothing. She’s thrown away my clothes as soon as I get a scratch hole worked in where I want it. Something that comes pre-done doesn’t stand a chance.

I also got a coupon for $10 off a Dream Angels bra. I’m not sure exactly what that is but I suspect it’s a bra with feathers or wings or maybe both. I’m fairly sure I don’t need it. The last time I had cleavage was when I had to wear a suit with a vest. I hadn’t worn the suit in a while and my shape had changed to the point that the vest pushed some parts of me up where they didn’t belong. Cleavage. And the under wire was pokey. I got a new suit and everything’s back where it belongs. Dream Angels would only confuse things. The feathers could be kind of fun, though, at least once in a while. Maybe I’ll stop by and see how many I could get with a $10 coupon.

A Grammar Question

It was a social gathering but just about everyone there was involved in Education in some way. Most were elementary teachers, a few worked in class rooms or in low level administration and they were talking shop. I’m not in education. The closest I get is once every few years when they want me to vote on a school referendum, so at this gathering I just sat back and listened as the topic changed from student behavior to curriculum and teaching challenges. One of the teachers started up about the difficulty she was having showing students how to diagram sentences.

“They don’t get it,” she said, “and honestly who even remembers it.” I was sitting back quietly and taking it in when she turned and pointed at me. “Do you know what a dangling participle is?”

“Yeah,” I said, “ever since puberty.”

Conversation stopped for a moment, then the group went on to talk about history. I know a bit about history but no one asked me another question. I’m not sure why.